Strategic analysis by Ibrahim Kaban
Private / Geostrategic Network for Studies
Both countries, Sweden and Finland, must have historical choices to end their neutrality regarding the Russian ambitions aimed at colonizing the European region, and controlling their economies as long as these countries continue to depend on Russian energy. Also, the neutrality adopted by some Western powers no longer guarantees their safety in light of the existence of two axes. It has become a mandatory choice as a geopolitical given to all countries, not only in Europe, but the international division between the two axes (Western powers - the Russians) has become purely mandatory after the developments resulting from the invasion. Russian for Ukraine.
Thus, the fear of Russian ambitions in Europe in the face of not having strong armies facing them caused Sweden and Finland to join NATO, which Russia, in turn, fears, and cannot come into contact with it militarily in light of the forces, capabilities and military capacity that would be disastrous if the war occurred between Russians and NATO. This means that joining the alliance is to ensure the protection of European countries, and to consolidate their unity, strength and ability.
It is clear that the inability of the Alliance to intervene directly to confront Russia in Ukraine gave a future vision for Sweden and Finland if there was any war with Russia, and the only guarantee to prevent Russian ambitions is joining the alliance, and a European reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine to prevent its accession to the alliance resulted from The accession of Sweden and Finland, and thus the European alliance, strengthens with these steps the unity of its position in the face of Russian haste and the continuation of the Ukrainian quagmire.
The Ukrainian crisis revealed the inability of NATO to confront Russia outside its map
NATO's direct intervention in the Ukrainian crisis means World War III. If Ukraine was a member of the alliance, Russia would not have dared invade it. Consequently, the neutral European countries in the Russian periphery no longer guarantee the hasty actions of the Russian regime, and ensuring that the Russians are prevented in the future from moving towards creating crises for these countries is to join the alliance. This was the realistic option for Sweden and Finland.
The Turkish regime and movement on the ropes of interests
The turning point that caught the Turkish regime in the trap of deepening relations with the Russians is the same that forced the Western powers to adhere to Turkey as a strategic force at the geographical, economic and military levels in the region separating Europe and Asia, especially since the Turkish regime was keen to play the role of the faithful policeman for Western interests during the Cold War. And the recent Turkish bias towards strategic relations with the Russians is a result of Turkish anger at the Western powers that intervened in Syria and prevented the Turks from carrying out the genocide of the Kurdish people in northern Syria, although the way was opened for it to implement some occupation projects and demographic change, as is the case in the areas of Afrin and Ras Al-Ain, Qabassin and Tal Abyad, however, the Turkish ambitions were greater than the forced halt on these borders. Rather, the project was to control the Syrian oil and gas sources in Al-Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor, in addition to its demand after 2015 that the Western powers represented by the international coalition led by the United States of America stop any military support for the forces Kurdish in Syria.
The geopolitical transformations in the Middle East have produced new paths in the nature of international relations, especially the rise of renewed dictatorship in some countries that were supposed to witness revolutions similar to the Arab Spring, and Turkey was at the forefront of these forces in which political Islam supported by the racist national movement rose. Together, they produced an authoritarian regime that plunged Turkey into the darkness of the Ottoman illusion. The country witnessed dramatic transformations, retreating from any solution with the Kurdish forces, restricting freedoms and democracy that was formed by Western pressures, especially the European Union, which supported the experience of the Justice and Development Party and prepared some suitable ground for closer rapprochement. From Turkey, and she was on the list of joining the union or at least to the introductions that help democratize Turkey more in return for actively approaching the union.
However, the emergency conditions that resulted from the Russian military intervention in Syria to save the Assad regime, in return for the refusal of the Western powers led by the United States of America to submit to Turkish ambitions in Syria. They were sufficient motives for the Turkish regime to take a new direction in relations with the central actor in the Syrian crisis, the Russians, as the Turkish regime tightened its control over the Syrian opposition, and prepared the scene for its influence without any other agenda, for example the Saudi and Emirati agenda in any force of the Syrian opposition, and thus Turkey entered into operations Concluding special deals with the Syrian and Iranian regime under the auspices of Russia under the banner of Sochi, Astana and the guarantor states, according to which the Turkish regime pushed the armed opposition groups to withdraw from most of the Syrian interior, after this opposition controlled large parts of Syria, then gathered them in border areas, and disrupted Its arms were directed at the Syrian regime, and directed it to fight the Kurds and the Kurdish presence, after Turkey realized that the Western powers led by the United States of America would not abandon the Kurdish military forces in Syria.
In fact, the United States and Russia, through special deals, provided Kurdish areas to the Turkish regime, but Erdogan’s approach did not stop at these sensitive and strategic areas for the Kurds, especially since the operations of displacement and demographic change carried out by the Turkish regime, according to which it eliminated 60% of the Kurdish presence in Syria The areas of Kafr al-Ain, Ras al-Ain, Qabasin and Tal Abyad became empty with 99% of the Kurdish population, in exchange for hundreds of thousands of Sunni Arabs settling, and handing over these areas to religious and racist extremist groups.
Russian-Turkish relations opened the door wide for the Turkish regime to practice more threats to Western interests, as the Turkish regime opened the gateway to problems with the West in its direct intervention in the Libyan crisis, in addition to destabilizing the security of Greece and Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean, and opening the door for Syrian refugees and others on the West to practice more of pressures. Of course, the Turkish goal in this process is to push the Western powers to accept Turkish special projects.
Turkish involvement in special projects with the Russians was not welcomed by its NATO partners, especially arms deals and the implementation of special projects in Syria, Libya, and the Azerbaijani-Armenian crisis. However, the West’s need for Turkey in several strategic files guaranteed the Turks to continue to tamper more, especially Turkey’s stay in NATO without directing any real opposition to its actions, even France and some NATO members when they objected to some of the actions of the Turkish regime, did not result from any development to limit the Turkish role In NATO and the hotspots of the Middle East.
Not only did the Syrian opposition hand over its cards to the Turkish regime, but the Western powers handed over the status quo regarding Turkish actions towards strategic issues related to NATO, and the occupation of vast areas of Syria and Iraq.
Why is Turkey angry?!
The accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO sends messages of concern to the Turkish regime, given that these two countries have a clear position on the different Turkish policies with the nature of Western countries that perpetuate democracy and human rights, and therefore the accession of Sweden and Finland to the alliance means strengthening the axis against Turkish policies, and this means that you will witness Future developments will put more pressure on the Turkish regime within the alliance.
The Turkish regime, in turn, is looking for guarantees to agree to the accession of Sweden and Finland, especially in the path related to the Swedish-Finnish view of the bad Turkish behavior towards its Kurdish citizens and the Kurdish presence in general in the region, and the terrorism file that has become exposed in the Turkish sponsorship of extremist groups in the region, which in turn threatens Europe's security is in the first place, and Sweden, along with Finland, has supported the Kurdish forces in Syria, along with the United States and France. Thus, the accession of Sweden and Finland necessarily means increased support for these forces, which the Turkish regime classifies as terrorist groups, while it itself sponsors terrorist groups fighting against Kurdish forces backed by the international coalition against terrorism.
Practically, the European Union has taken the decision to put the PKK on the terrorist list since 1992, and all Western countries, including Sweden and Finland, formally agree, such as France, Belgium, Greece and Britain, to the decision, but in practice they deal with all Kurdish activities, and there is clear Kurdish activity in most Western countries, including Germany, which Take the strongest position against the Kurdistan Workers' Party. While Turkey accuses its NATO allies of sponsoring the activities of the Kurdish forces in Syria, which Turkey considers part of the military activity of the PKK, the international coalition finds the Kurdish forces in Syria a strategic ally against terrorism, and until this moment the coalition countries provide military and financial capabilities in the ongoing war against ISIS In the north and east of Syria, where Turkey finds this support as partial recognition of the Autonomous Administration, and thus Turkey loses its extremist tools, including the Syrian armed opposition, which these countries no longer provide support for at a time when the United States and the Western power trust the Syrian Democratic Forces, and the two countries Sweden and Finland support this The support, which bothers Turkey, is why it fears a future development in NATO’s positions towards political recognition of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria.
Practical results
The Turkish regime realizes that the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO means strengthening the French front facing Turkish actions, and this necessarily means strengthening the front against Turkish policies. Therefore, the Turkish regime fears this accession if Sweden and Finland guarantee the validity of the Turkish concerns and sign an agreement with them before joining.
The geopolitical conditions in Europe and the Middle East are pushing Turkey to the jaws of the pincers, and put its policies before two options.. The balance of Russia is returning to the Western incubator, and this will cost the current regime a lot, because the way to go may be easy in the midst of multiple competitions, circumstances and geopolitical fluctuations, but the path of return It will not be easy, because giving up strategic interests with one party at the expense of another may be harmful to the process of Turkish interests, because Turkish relations with the Russian side have become strategic as with Western powers, while the West is leading an economic and political war with the Russians, and this means that the Turkish regime is now between the jaws of the pliers.
The strategy of exporting internal problems
Erdogan's regime is very weak
Turkey's "economic crisis" is "the most important factor in its calculations," Howard Eisenstat, a Turkey expert at St. Lawrence University in New York State and the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC, told France 24.
The Turkish lira has lost 47 percent of its value over the past year, with prices rising more than 54 percent. Soaring inflation in 20 years marks a new low in Turkey's currency crisis since 2018, and crisis experts blame Erdogan's belief - contrary to all economic evidence - that high interest rates are causing inflation.
Esenstat noted that Turkey does not want to "antagonize Russia", as it is "very vulnerable to the loss of Russian wheat, gas and oil."
Russia is in fact a vital trading partner for the beleaguered Turkish economy, providing 45 percent of its natural gas and 70 percent of its wheat. The latter is a particularly high priority import, as rising bread prices are seen as a major source of discontent in Turkey. Russia is also Turkey's largest source of tourists, with 4.7 million visitors representing 19% of all travelers to the country in 2021.
competitive cooperation
Historically, Turkey and Russia have a track record of enmity with each other, most notably when the conflicting geostrategic maneuvers of Tsarist Russia and the Ottoman Empire saw them fight on more than 10 occasions from the 16th to the 20th centuries. At the start of the Cold War, Turkey pushed the self-evident anti-communist Kemalist and pro-Western ethos to join NATO and host US nuclear missiles, a major source of Soviet concern until they were removed after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The latest Russian-Turkish diplomatic crisis erupted in 2015, when Turkey shot down a Russian plane near the Syrian border. But an official apology from Erdogan soon ended Moscow's retaliatory sanctions - prompting a rapid thaw in relations that survived Russia and Turkey's support for the opposing sides in the Syria, Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh wars. Unluhisarcikli of the German Marshall Fund said this latest model in Russian-Turkish relations is best described as “competitive cooperation,” since the support of competing powers abroad “does not prevent them from cooperating in energy and trade.”
A year after this quickly resolved rift with Russia, the dramatic coup attempt sparked a widespread crackdown as Ankara held the responsible Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen and his movement. Erdogan's government felt that the West was not supportive enough after this potential coup.
Thus the failed coup paved the way for deepening Turkish-Russian relations, explained Riley Barry, a Turkish scholar at Harvard University. In the aftermath of the attempted coup, Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeded in planting more seeds of doubt in Erdogan's mind that the West was not his ultimate protector and security guarantor, and he achieved his desired effect of wrecking NATO allies when Turkey bought the S-400. "A Russian missile system, a major red line that a NATO country has to cross," Barry told France 24. suits Turkey's interests."
In this context, Barry continued, "Having been close to Russia and Putin more recently than at any other time in modern history, Turkey would be highly vulnerable to condemning Russia in the language used by the United States and Western European countries."
She added: "It is also important to remember that the United States and other countries do not share the sea with Russia and are not separated by only another country (Georgia)."
Old interests in Ukraine
At the same time, Turkey has more extensive economic relations with Ukraine than most of those Western countries. Ukraine supplies 15 percent of Turkey's critical wheat imports, making it Turkey's second largest supplier of wheat. About two million Ukrainians vacationed there last year, making them Turkey's third largest source of tourism.
Turkey's burgeoning defense sector established key relations with Ukraine before Kyiv's crisis with Moscow. Ukraine announced last year that it was building a plant for the joint production of the Bayraktar TB2 drone - Turkey's most famous military export, famous for its effectiveness to Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh war and now for Ukraine as it fights Russia. Ukraine has also signed deals to manufacture engines for both the upcoming new models of the TB2 and an upcoming Turkish military helicopter.
And the drone manufacturer isn't just a private Turkish company: Selcuk Bayraktar, Baykar's chief technology officer, is Erdogan's son-in-law.
Eisenstat said Turkey's "long-term economic interests in Ukraine" mean it "sees no eventual gain in Russia's control" of the country. This, he said, explains why Turkey "quietly wants to support Ukraine," despite being careful to avoid alienating Russia.
So far, Ankara's balancing of these two demands has maintained decent relations with both sides. Turkey not only hosted peace talks this week, but also received the Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers for trilateral talks earlier in March, before the Turkish foreign minister visited both Kyiv and Moscow.
This shows that Turkey's need for links with both Russia and Ukraine is not at all unrequited: "Both countries were willing to play ball with Ankara," Eisenstat concluded. "You don't see Moscow complaining about the Bayraktars. You don't see Kyiv complaining about the lack of Turkish sanctions. Both were smitten with praise - because they both want Ankara on their side as much as possible and prevent it from going to the other side."
Classification of the PKK in the European Union in response to the policeman's demand
In the beginnings of 1993, the German state invoked the “National Associations Law” that prevents the PKK from carrying out its political activities and activities, and although Germany did not officially recognize those years as a list of “terrorist organizations”, it closed the doors of Kurdish institutions and imposed prison sentences and fines on Kurdish activists and politicians.
The United States of America was also expected to announce the decision a few years later, and on August 10, 1997, the Office of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, under the auspices of the US State Department, listed the PKK as a "foreign terrorist organization", and after this decision, the then White House began The first international conspiracy against the leader Abdullah Ocalan on October 9, 1998.
For its part, the US State Department blamed the events of the Dirty War in the 1990s that took place in Kurdistan, and invoked the decisions of the Turkish state courts and included the PKK in the "terror list". For the same reasons, the United Kingdom included the PKK in the "terror list" after 3 Years later, on July 20, 2000, London approved the inclusion of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which had not launched any attacks, either in the United States or in the United Kingdom, on the “terror list”, as were included by Canada and Japan in 2002, and Australia in 2005, and New Zealand in 2010.
In the wake of the terrorist attacks that rocked the United States on September 11, 2001, Washington put pressure on the European Union to "prevent international terrorism", as the United States claimed that the European Union was still weak on the issue of "anti-terror", and on that basis, the European Union was established in December The first 2001 list of "terrorist organizations" under pressure from the United States.
The first list, issued by the European Union on December 28, 2001, included 12 organizations, including the Spanish organization ETA, the November 17 organization in Greece, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Islamic world and Hamas. The PKK was not on the list that remained For a period of only 6 months, but after the intervention of the Turkish state and world powers in the Council of Ministers of the European Union, it was announced on May 2, 2002, that the PKK was included in this list as well.
For its part, Brussels changed its position during membership talks with Ankara, citing Turkish court decisions to include the PKK on the "terror list"; According to the research conducted by ANF Firat News Agency, between 2003 and 2013 the PKK was accused of 68 documented incidents, but it is interesting that most of these attacks do not have clear and documented data, and they rely only on the allegations of the Turkish state.
In addition, the European Union accused in its "terror bleak", the PKK of the crimes committed by the Turkish state, and in particular, those events that took place in the Gali region on May 27, 2009, which resulted in the killing of seven soldiers, but the audio recordings What emerged later and the trial that took place in the military court revealed that the officers themselves laid mines and that Brigadier General Zaki S. was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison.
On September 29, 2007, a civilian car was shot at in the village of Hamman in Ilkeh, killing seven village guards. A report issued by Mazloum Deir and the Human Rights Association (IHD), on October 19, 2007 made it clear that the PKK does not He has something to do with this, and it turns out that the assassination of the village guards had been planned by Turkish soldiers, while the European Union accused the PKK of carrying out this operation for years.
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Quotations and information included in the analysis from several media outlets
